f the good
gifts which we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage.

With the then head-master of the grammar-school, Christ Hospital, we
were not personally acquainted; but we cannot help thinking that he has
been singularly unfortunate in his Eulogist. He seems to have gone out
of his province, and far out of his depth, when he attempted to teach
boys the profoundest principles of Poetry. But we must also add, that we
cannot credit this account of him; for this doctrine of poetry being at
all times logical, is that of which Wordsworth and Coleridge take so
much credit to themselves for the discovery; and verily it is one too
wilfully absurd and extravagant to have entered into the head of an
honest man, whose time must have been wholly occupied with the
instruction of children. Indeed Mr. Coleridge's own poetical practices
render this story incredible; for, during many years of his authorship,
his diction was wholly at variance with such a rule, and the strain of
his poetry as illogical as can be well imagined. When Mr. Bowyer
prohibited his pupils from using, in their themes, the above-mentioned
names, he did, we humbly submit, prohibit them from using the best means
of purifying their taste and exalting their imagination. Nothing could
be so graceful, nothing so natural, as classical allusions, in the
exercises of young minds, when first admitted to the fountains of Greek
and Latin Poetry; and the Teacher who could seek to dissuade their
ingenious souls from such delightful dreams, by coarse, vulgar, and
indecent ribaldry, instead of deserving the name of "sensible," must
have been a low-minded vulgar fellow, fitter for the Porter than the
Master of such an Establishment. But the truth probably is, that all
this is a fiction of Mr. Coleridge, whose wit is at all times most
execrable and disgusting. Whatever the merits of his Master were, Mr.
Coleridge, even from his own account, seems to have derived little
benefit from his instruction, and for the "inestimable advantage," of
which he speaks, we look in vain through this Narrative. In spite of so
excellent a teacher, we find Master Coleridge,

Even before my fifteenth year, bewildered _in metaphysicks and in
theological controversy_. Nothing else pleased me. _History and
particular facts_ lost all interest in my mind. Poetry itself, yea
novels and romances, became insipid to me. This preposterous pursuit
was beyond doubt _injurious, both to